|
It doesn't take an expert to see the comic market in Japan
is vastly different from our own. Considering comic books
are seen as a "fan" hobby suitable for children and a minority
of adults in America and Canada, Western comic books are
marketed and directed toward this very specific audience.
The result? Superhero stories featuring muscular men and
buxom, hard-hitting women; a handful of alternative comics
about crime, music, or high school life; kids' comics of
popular cartoon shows to add a little reading to couch-potato
lives. Western comic books don't usually appeal to one gender
over another (you can't really blame them, considering their
small initial readership), so most of the material that
comes out is "coed friendly" and features casts of equally-attractive
men and women both kicking the same amounts of enemy tail.
Superhero or spy or sci-fi are the most reoccurring genre
types, and very rarely will you pick up a comic that has
nothing to do with the out-of-the-ordinary.
In Japan, where manga (Japanese comics) are a staple part
of society and children to teenagers to mothers to office
workers may all be repeat readers, things work differently.
The readership for manga in Japan, particularly when compared
to the US, is enormous; according to Dreamland Japan, at
one point the manga magazine Weekly Shounen Jump circulated
as many as 6 million copies an issue (and it's a weekly
mag, mind you). Manga are black and white and often printed
on cheap newsprint, which makes them more affordable than
the all-color comics we have in the West. With the millions
of people in Japan reading manga regularly, the whole spectrum
of genres is covered: superheroes, sure, but how about manga
based on games like checkers, love stories between humans
and demons, or a best-selling current comic entitled, "The
Prince of Tennis?" That's right--one of the more popular
manga in Japan right now is based on tennis. When
there are so many categories, it's also no surprise that
Japan is great at catering separately to each gender, and
therefore we have deliciously different shounen ("boys'")
manga and shoujo ("girls'") manga. There are actually sub-categories
within shounen and shoujo (little boys as opposed to older
boys, elementary school girls vs. high school girls, etc.),
but this article's purpose is to generalize and summarize,
so we'll just stick to trends. Besides, we use the terms
shounen and shoujo all over this site without
sticking to more specific labels, so this article may clear
up a bit of what we're referring to.
To start, shounen (boys') manga is usually about fighting,
mystery/action, sci-fi, or sports. Stories about ninja or
samurai are quite frequent, robots and gadgets are popular,
and you can hardly flip through a shounen manga magazine
without noticing a title about soccer or basketball (or
several titles, for that matter). Fighters in action/superhero
manga usually start off solo or in a small pack and expand
to a decently-sized group, and at least several enormously
powerful good guys are usually present within it (including
the hero). It's not rare for the good guy's strength or
firepower to be equivalent to several normal men's, for
example.
Shoujo (girls') manga, on the other hand, is usually about
relationships, nine times out of ten focusing on a romantic
one. Shoujo has its fair share of superhero stories--take
Sailor Moon, for example, and all the "magical girl" (yes,
that's the name of a genre) manga like it--but shoujo features
many titles about nothing special at all: just a girl, and
the boy she's in love with, and their romantic hijinks.
Shoujo is usually less about the goal and more about the
"getting there," so, while a shounen manga may have a very
desirable ambition and a very specific route the characters
must follow to succeed, shoujo titles usually stay away
from that formula and focus more on the varying things that
happen to the lead throughout her life. It's not uncommon
for a shoujo heroine to never reach or even stick to her
initial goal, because she'll often find something more important
(like the boy next door rather than that hod-rod upperclassman)
along the way.
What's usually very clear from the get-go is that shounen
manga and shoujo manga portray relationships very differently.
In shounen, the lead is usually very ambitious but very,
very loyal. He almost never goes at anything solo--he may
be at the top in the end, but he'll never get there without
his best friend/group of friends helping him, and he'd never
turn his back on a single one of them (not even on the jerk
or the hothead or the coward, because every group
has at least one). Shoujo is usually more individualistic,
where things centralize more on the lead's personal development
and that of her mate. This doesn't mean shoujo doesn't feature
long casts--on the contrary, shoujo is infamous for having
gorgeous male exchange students or troublesome female classmates
pop up and stir things up a bit--but bonds outside of the
main two or three people are usually less solid, and a shoujo
lead is perfectly able to live her own life with her man
and leave her friends to their own devices (or, frankly,
out of the story). Shounen manga is usually much more hesitant
to let cast members go.
To speak of aesthetics, art also differs. Shounen manga
usually gives its male characters ridiculously spiky hair,
its girls big eyes and chests, and is very cavalier about
nudity. Shoujo usually features even bigger eyes, protective
bishounen (pretty boys), and its nudity, although perhaps
less gratuitous, is more sensual and/or sexual. Shounen
art styles are usually solid and very black-and-white and
follow a very easy-to-follow panel layout, but shoujo is
often more artistic and less exact, whimsical (imagine girls
standing in the wind with long flowing hair), features more
screen toning (shading) and has variety within its panel
layouts--this is reflective of story content, considering
shounen needs you to follow fights or games but shoujo has
to portray a lot of thinking and "feeling" scenes. Shoujo
color art is usually superior, with breathtaking color palettes
and artistic styling as opposed to shounen's simple "colored-in
covers" feel of most of its color work.
Please keep in mind, these are generalizations. There are
huge variations within all genres of manga considering
the endless number of titles being published each month,
and stereotyping manga is like stereotyping people--you
can't, because each individual is unique (let's not forget
that manga is made by people). I think these generalizations
are reasonably fair to make, though, considering they're
based on years of experience I've had in the industry and
considering that after you've read a million ninja titles
or seen a thousand girls fall for the boy who sits in front
of her in homeroom, you start to notice trends.
Now, if you'll excuse me. I have some Prince of Tennis
to read. 
|
